The present invention relates to home automation systems, devices, and methods for voice controlled home automation, and in particular, to improved information access and device control using audio in the home environment.
Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Home automation systems provide users with the ability to control and monitor various home appliances and systems, such as lighting, heating, air conditioning, entertainment, and security systems. In many conventional systems, each system is controlled through a dedicated remote control device, control panel, or a hosted or standalone computer program that communicates with the desired device or system via one or more wired or wireless networks. Each of these systems include the similar limitations related to the use of a control device and network that prevent widespread adoption of home automation in new and existing homes.
For instance, controlling electrical devices in the home from within the home, or from a remote location, usually requires a control device that has a complex user interface consisting of many buttons or an extensive menu-driven command structure in order to reach and command any of several tens of controllable devices in a home. Such user interfaces can be cumbersome and confusing for many users. Additionally, unless the control device is permanently installed in a fixed location, which reduces the flexibility and convenience of the system, users need to keep track of the remote control device for each system. While such drawbacks have been somewhat mitigated by the use of control application executed on a device that a user will typically always have on his or her person, such as a smart phone or PDA, controlling different types of home devices and systems often requires the user to execute or otherwise access separate applications on their portable computing or communication devices. While this can simplify the control of some home automation systems, running separate applications still requires a user to remember which application controls which systems and to access the device whenever he or she would like to control one of the home automation systems.
Furthermore, each household device that a user would like to control using convention home automation systems requires an expensive internal or add-on control box or network interface card (NIC), such as an Ethernet adaptor, wireless network adapter, or 60 Hz power line network devices, in order for the household device to be responsive to commands. For example, a den with three lamps, a TV set, and a hi-fi system, would require at least five control device to interface with all of the devices in the room. The addition of anymore devices, of course, would require an additional control device. An entire house with several rooms with several control devices to control several household devices would require at least few dozen control devices. Such implementations make for an expensive systems using current technology.
To simplify deployment in existing homes, conventional home automation systems have been adapted to transmit commands and other information between rooms over existing household electrical power lines or using wireless communications. An example of power line transmission of information is the X10 technology, which is an open industry standard for communication among electrical devices via household electrical wires. In systems that use power line wiring for signaling and control, command signals are transmitted on the electrical power lines at radio frequencies using various digital and analog communication standards between control device, such as the aforementioned X10 protocol.
Another example of communication among control devices within a residence or other building using wireless communication is the Zigbee communication control system. Zigbee enabled devices transmit information between control devices using a wireless network. Such systems also include functionality to monitor a home remotely, manage home energy consumption, lock/unlock doors, operate lights, turn on the televisions and other entertainment devices, adjust environmental control systems.
Despite some of the apparent advantages of these and other conventional home automation systems, each of such system have various shortcomings related to convenience, cost, and functionality. Embodiments of the present invention address these and other drawbacks.